The Technology Behind ID's Games

orac2 writes: "The current issue of IEEE Spectrum has an article on the groundbreaking technology behind iD Software's games, from the days of Commander Keen through to Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Graphics technologies covered include the original 2-D buffer trick that made side-scrolling games on the PC feasible, as well as the more modern Raycasting and Binary Space Partition Tree techniques. Carmack is quoted extensively."

Comments

he is a C hacker, that's it

[sploreg]

How the BSP tree being great technology is beyond me. It is over a decade old and is just horrid! It is preventing games from having dynamic environments because of its slow insert time. It's time that someone in the CS field trys to figure out a different method, if one exists, because our current method or ordering polygons is downright bad. Now as for Carmack, not to sound like a troll, but he is just a C hacker who is using previously used ideas and techniques. Why people worship him, especially now, is beyond me. If he comes up with a way to render polygons fast and provide a quick way of adding new polygons to a scene in real time without just increasing the minimum requirements to $3000, then I will be impressed. Other companies have provided new techniques and methods that have had a far greater impact than any ID game, but they don't get any credit. I'm not sure why. I could make a game that renders with Final Fantasy, the Spirits Within, level of graphics but the minimum requirements will be tremendous. Would people think I was a genius for "bringing games to the next level"? Sure they would. but for what? The same thing but with more muscle thrown at it? bah